Our Victories Lie Incomplete
by La Vik
Summary: Marius rejoices in the fact that Eponine and Enjolras have survived, and makes a place for them in his new life with Cosette. Marius and Cosette learn that love is a cornerstone, but not the entire foundation, Eponine learns that people do not always do as you expect them to, and Enjolras learns that while his revolution has failed, little revolutions can happen every day.
1. Chapter 1

To be allowed to forget would be the greatest act of mercy, thought Marius Pontmercy. So quickly had all of their plans been shattered. In one night, all of their childish ambitions were dashed to shreds. After all, had that not been what it was? Childish delusion, all of it.

He should have been thankful for his own life. He should have felt hope for the fact that another may have been spared. Though he was sure Eponine had died in his arms, they had found her still breathing, her heart only just still beating as she lay in the pile of the dead. She was taken to be cared for, and when Marius came to his senses, he begged his grandfather, M. Gillenormand, to pay for the care of his best friend. But while somehow Eponine managed to survive and take medicines, she was wracked with a terrible infection so that she was constantly feverish and delirious. It was almost assured that despite surviving the attack on the barricade, she would not last long – and all for the sake of love for him. Of all the deaths, hers was the one that would weigh most heavily on his conscience because she did not sacrifice herself for a lofty ideal. She did not fancy herself a hero or a martyr. She died with great suffering for her love for one boy.

And what of the others? Marius clenched his hand tightly on his glass of water as he sat in the Café Musain, and his spirits dropped as he thought of his friends – especially Enjolras. He had been counted among the dead, but his body was not found and buried. It was said that observers saw him fall from the barricades It was assumed that it had been taken by the snipers who had made quick work of them, as a prize, or as a final act of denigration.

_Oh, my friends, my friends, forgive me – that I live and you are gone…_

He did not deserve this. Even the opportunity of a beautiful life with Cosette, the woman he loved, was hardly a remedy to the pain that wrenched at his gut. But he was forced to carry on – because Cosette surely deserved to feel comfort and safety, and not worry about his well-being. She was dear and precious, and Marius had now been bestowed the gift of being allowed to cherish her. And yet, he was filled with so much pain.

This made him cherish his love for Cosette all the more, because there was no one left for him to love, and, he realized, no one else left to love him in the way that Eponine did. Cosette was the only precious thing, the only good thing left for him here.

I will never go away, she insisted to him, and we will be together every day.

This was all the world held for him now. This was the only new world that his friends' sacrifice brought about. He had to cling tightly to it, and create a place for himself – and for Cosette – in it.

* * *

_A/N's_

_Hello readers! If you're coming across this story having followed some of my others, I deeply apologize for leaving them incomplete. I hope to return to them one day soon! Since my last update on my Harry Potterverse story, 'Grim Becomings', I have gotten through my first year of nursing school and published my first book, 'Sampaguita Roots'. I hope you check them out one day as well.  
_

_This particular story is one that has been doodled in a notebook since I was about 12, and I have yet to see the movie rendition of Les Miz, so I apologize if there are any inconsistencies to people who only seen the movie. This is a reboot of a storyline I came up with over 10 years ago that I thought was worth another look. I hope you enjoy!  
_


	2. Chapter 2

Funny, how things become a blur when you are ill, Eponine thought to herself – and this was perhaps the first lucid thought she had been capable of in many days now. She had no recollection of the hours she spent in violent fevers and chills, vomiting and heaving once her stomach was rid of its contents. Now, she was a bit aware of everything – but only a bit. She was a bit aware of the nurse daubing a cool cloth at her forehead, and the fading light outside of the window. It was evening now. She recalled now that she swore she was dying. Where was everyone?

"Where am I?" she asked feebly.

"The hospital. Monsieur Pontmercy asked that his grandfather pay for only the best care," the nurse explained, laying down the washcloth. "He'll be pleased to know that you were recovering. We nearly lost you a few times –"

"Monsieur Pontmercy! Marius!" Eponine said shrilly. "Oh, Marius! He asked you to care for me?"

She felt a swelling of pride and hope in her chest – Marius was alive, and he asked them to care for her! Did this mean that her confession had caused him to love her as well? Did this mean that he finally understood? "When can I see him?" she asked excitedly. "Oh, where is he?"

"He is away, but he should be returning this evening," the nurse explained calmly, knowing nothing of Eponine's history with the young man. "He and Madame Pontmercy –"

"_Madame_," Eponine repeated. "I don't understand."

"You've only just missed his wedding by four days, mademoiselle," the nurse replied. "He wanted dearly for you to be well in time to attend, but there was nothing I could do."

Married. Marius and Cosette were married. The swelling of hope and joy that she had felt fizzled into oblivion, and she slouched back into the bed – she did not even realize that she had been trying to prop herself up on her arms.

"Would you help me up?" she groaned quietly, not able to look at her nurse. "I need to – " she cleared her throat tactfully. "I should hope I don't need to elaborate."

"Oh, of course!" the nurse replied, and she made quick work of helping Eponine sit up in bed for the first time. For such a petite woman, the nurse had strong arms, and she diligently helped her patient walk shakily across the room to the washroom. Eponine granted the woman a smile and shut the door behind her.

A window, she observed. She had climbed out of her share of windows in the past, and though it was far more risky in her current state, she couldn't stand to be here. She could not stand for Marius to pay her expenses out of friendship. She was many things. She was poor and ignorant and uneducated, perhaps a bit naïve, but she had the strange sort of dignity that came with complete obliviousness. Marius was a married man, whether her heart could accept it or not, and she refused to be a burden to them. Her resolve set, she forced open the window and began to climb down the outside wall when suddenly, her arms felt terribly weak. She attempted to hold on, but found her grip weakening until at last, she dropped – but rather than hitting the ground as she had expected, she was caught. She opened her eyes to see a familiar face.

It was a boy – one of Marius' friends from the barricades, their leader. She had never thought to commit his name to memory, but she did remember his face well. He spoke well, and had many deep thoughts. Despite the fact that she hardly knew him at all, she would never fail to recognize his tousled hair and his fiery eyes. Enjolras. That was his name, she remembered now.

"What are you doing here?" she asked in a whisper as he allowed her to get to her feet.

"Running." He said simply. "I don't know if they're looking for me, but I fear they'll have my head if they know I'm alive."

"Well, that's absurd," Eponine said, crossing her arms. Her brow furrowed in confusion and she tilted her head questioningly. "It's over, isn't it? We're a bunch of children, what business would they have pursuing you further?"

"I started a revolution, mademoiselle," Enjolras replied, raising his eyebrows at her and speaking slowly as though she would not be able to understand otherwise. "That's treason in this country."

"To them, it's no more than a bad child throwing a tantrum," Eponine replied skeptically. "They'll forget you soon enough. How long has it been? Perhaps they've forgotten already."

"You were dead," Enjolras interrupted suddenly. "Were you not the first to be shot?"

"I suppose I was," Eponine said casually. "But I've clearly not died, unless I am a ghost. And if I am a ghost, you are a ghost. Do you believe that to be true?" Enjolras simply blinked incredulously at Eponine – everything she said just seemed so frivolous and confused. She glanced at him, unsure of why he was no longer speaking. "Where do you plan on running to?"

"Nowhere in particular," he stated simply. "And you?"

"The same," she nodded. "And so, if we are both headed nowhere in particular, we might as well help one another find the way."

This girl was strange – she had an unusual, child-like enthusiasm and warmth to her. Enjolras almost found it disconcerting. He was, after all, a young man studying law. He was used to university students and philosophers, not sprites like Eponine Thenardier – certainly not young women who had the appearance of moths and the spirits of butterflies.

"Why are you running, anyway?" he asked, sounding half-exasperated for no real reason at all, except that the young woman in front of him was utterly bewildering him. "There's no one looking for you –"

The tone of his statement escaped his lips before he could help himself, and immediately he found himself regretting it when he saw look on the young girl's face. It was strange an unexpected, almost as though she was about to laugh.

"Well, of course, I know that," Eponine shrugged, and it was then that he noticed she indeed looked very different from when she had been following Marius around at the meetings of Les Amis. She was wearing a nightshirt over the underclothes women wore under their dresses, and all of it was almost grotesquely large on her, owing to her bout of illness. "Marius is married, you know," she said sadly. Enjolras let out a huff at the girl's pitiful plight. Everyone except for Marius, of course, knew that she was so deeply, blindly in love with him.

"Did you attend?" she asked, interrupting his thoughts. The heartbreak was in her voice, and yet she sounded so normal – so natural. That made it all the more heartbreaking, as it was evident this pain was nothing new. Nearly dying was nothing new. It was simply the way of things. Poor waifs like Eponine were, Enjolras mused, the precise thing he had wanted to fight for. There were so many like her in the streets of France, who were indifferent as to whether they lived or died – and many, like her, were good and loving people. He glanced at her again, only to find a look of impatience on her face. He realized then that he had been so busy musing, he had forgotten to answer her question.

"I did not," he answered with a nod. "They think I'm dead, and that is the way it must stay."

"You haven't listened to a word I said. In one ear and out the other without any regard at all," Eponine chuckled. "That must be why you and Marius are friends. You college boys are all so very silly," she grinned. Enjolras had every intention of voicing the offense he took to the statement – as though she did not understand the largeness of what he was trying to do. However, before he could find a way to do so that she would not answer with yet more silliness, she grabbed a hold of his wrist and raised her eyebrows at him. "Now, come, you. We must go to Marius and wait for him. He will be thrilled to know that you are alive, at least."

Eponine knew the very quickest way to M. Gillenormand's home, where Marius lived – and if the nurse was correct in saying that Marius and Cosette were to arrive back home tonight, they would hopefully not need to wait long. Eponine leaned back comfortably against the stone wall with her arms crossed over herself, to wait for Marius as she had so many times before in this very same spot, but Enjolras noticed that she looked a bit more pale and out of breath than he had ever seen her before.

"You are not well," he said flatly. "You shouldn't be running around the streets at night – you should be back in the hospital where you came from."

"An urchin like me doesn't belong in a hospital," Eponine laughed, clucking her tongue at him. "It's not fitting. Hospitals are for people with money, and I am certainly not one of them."

"They shouldn't be, though," Enjolras said, feeling a familiar spark rise in his chest upon hearing Eponine's attitude towards her own welfare. "Don't you think that you have a right to live? To be taken care of just as well as anyone else?"

"Well, yes, I suppose," Eponine said, as though the ideas he was voicing were confusing and required her to think a great deal. "But since when does anyone get what they truly deserve?"

Enjolras almost felt angry – not at Eponine, but that the circumstances which created her in this way, in which her smile and her demeanor hid absolute resignation to her fate. She was precisely the epitome of the life he wished to change, and he had failed. For this, he was filled with a sort of anger and resentment, an insatiable wondering of what he might have achieved if more had come to his aid. What had he not done?

"You're awful quiet, monsieur Enjolras," Eponine mused – as though she were not used to being quiet herself. For all the quiet musing that Enjolras did, for a great number of reasons, Eponine appeared to always have something to say, something to fill the silence.

"You oughtn't be talking so much, you'll use up all your strength," he pointed out, noting that the color in her face had still not fully returned after their run through the streets. "If you won't return to the hospital, at least sit down. How do you know Marius is going to return tonight?"

"I don't," Eponine shrugged. "I only have the word of my nurse in the hospital. But I have nowhere to go, and no one to look for me, so I will wait," she said with the resolution of a watchdog. She would wait for Marius as long as it took, Enjolras knew. She was a poor thing indeed. Still, it seemed that she knew how to listen well enough, as she sat down on the ground as she was directed. She glanced up at Enjolras and clucked impatiently again. "You ought to sit down with me, it's rude not to," she stated. Taken aback by the request, Enjolras obliged and sat down to wait with the girl.

"Tell me more about the revolution you dreamed about," Eponine said curiously. "I did hear you tell it so many times, but it was in words I didn't really understand. You and your friends are poets, you see, and I am not."

Slightly astonished that she took interest at all, Enjolras began to talk, doing his best to be aware of his words – Eponine appreciated the effort he took in not making her feel too ignorant, though she was not ashamed to admit that she was. Indeed, it all sounded very nice, all his talk about freedom and choice and a better life. What she was able to gather, anyway, seemed like a beautiful future indeed. However, she soon found herself growing more and more tired from the exertion of their run through the streets of Paris. She did not want to fall asleep. It would have been terribly rude, but she was so very tired. Monsieur Enjolras was a smart man. He would understand, surely, she thought as she dozed off gently against the wall of Monsieur Gillenormand's home.


	3. Chapter 3

_"Eponine! Oh, Eponine!"_

Hearing a familiar voice speaking her name, Eponine roused from her slumber and found herself no longer outside the garden gate, but inside, on a soft old chaise with two faces peering down at her. One was Enjolras, and the other –

"Marius!" she said with a bright smile, "Oh, Marius when did you –"

"Eponine!" he said, almost tearful as he hugged her closely. The waifish girl froze in surprise, glancing questioningly at Enjolras, who was standing just barely to one side. "We carried you inside, and you didn't wake – you were so pale, we thought –"

"You thought I was dead!" Eponine said, leaping back slightly and clapping her hands together with a brief laugh. "Oh, I fooled you again!"

"Eponine, this is not even funny," Marius stated, placing his hands on her shoulders – but in his voice, it was evident that while his concern for her was pleasing, it was still only the concern one had for a very dear friend.

"Where is Cosette?" Eponine asked, her voice falling slightly in spirit. Marius, however, was oblivious as always and began to tell the story to his friends – how Cosette's father revealed his true life on his deathbed – on their wedding night, no less – and how rather than a honeymoon as they had hoped, they instead embarked on a journey to track down several people. First, a kindly old bishop, who they found had passed on just shortly before. Second, a fat old attorney who in fact, was Cosette's real father and who refused to even entertain their company. And last, the sister of one Jean Valjean, for whom he had been imprisoned as he tried to steal a loaf of bread. Eponine, still quite tired, had to strain to follow the story without losing her place, just like reading a very long book.

"We found them," Marius replied. "She is very old now, of course. Very, very old. I suppose long life runs in their blood. Her son cares for her – Cosette asked that I should let her stay with them for some time. I'll be alone in this house, except for my grandfather. I'd be thrilled if the two of you would stay here," he said.

"Do you know what's become of my father?" Eponine asked. Marius' face suddenly sprouted an expression of guilt as he recalled how he threw money in the face of old Thenardier, told him to leave Paris and never come back. Eponine, shrewd and clever as always, noted this expression and interpreted it well – it meant that Marius did not want to talk. She simply shrugged. "It does not matter anyway – he would not want me to look for him. I would only be a bother."

"Well, you are never a bother here," Marius said, clapping a hand warmly on Eponine's shoulder. "My friends!"

He seemed to be choked with an emotion full of joy that surprised Enjolras a bit – just days ago, he was lovesick and obsessed with the woman called Cosette. He had quite nearly chosen not to fight alongside them at all for the girl's sake, and now suddenly, Eponine and Enjolras were of such interest to him. He doted over them as his guests, despite any protests – he fed them, and gave them clothes to wear, though Eponine had to make do with the clothes of an old aunt of his, who was a fair bit larger than her. Monsieur Gillenormand's home was large and had room for all of them, and so they had their pick of the rooms while Marius made to write a telegram to his grandfather that they had guests. M. Gillenormand was on another of his long trips to see his property in the countryside, and would be pleased to find his home a bit less quiet. Eponine was the first of the night to retire to bed, and she fell asleep quickly on what was easily the most comfortable bed she had ever touched in her life.

She awoke in the middle of the night, however, as was her custom. She was used to wandering around at night, for whatever reason, and so she took to pacing the corridors of this new – perhaps only temporary – home. She felt a bit like a ghost, and only for a moment she wondered if perhaps Marius would love her a little bit more if she had been one. He did seem to love her very dearly, after all, as he cradled her like a child in the moments that he thought her to be dying. He ought to have know better, Eponine thought with a tiny smile. She was a bad weed, she decided, and bad weeds were always the hardest to be rid of. Girls like Cosette were flowers – beautiful, and of course worth more, but easily crushed and destroyed, never to be seen again. That was what made Cosette so precious, Eponine understood.

"I don't suppose you plan to run away from this place too."

Eponine turned around in the darkness, posturing herself out of reflex for a fight, only to find Enjolras a short bit down the hallway, as it appeared he too had taken it upon himself to embark upon a late night stroll.

"I would not leave Marius alone that way," she huffed indignantly.

"But he is not alone. I am here, after all."

"You don't love him the way I –"

Eponine froze, unable to finish the phrase. It was not proper to say such things, after all, about a man who was so newly married. She crossed her arms over herself and glared at Enjolras.

"I don't understand why you hate me so," she said with a sour expression. "You think I'm silly. You think I'm a poor silly girl. But I think you're quite silly as well – what are you planning on doing with your life now, m'sieur?"

"I will try again."

Eponine let out a bark of laughter that riled up a small cloud of anger in Enjolras – what right did an urchin like her have to mock his ideals which he had so diligently crafted and defended. He took a few steps toward her, almost lurching threateningly, only to find that she did not scare. He should have known.

"And then you will be killed, and there will be no one left, and all the things you hate will go on and on and on," Eponine nodded. "And you will watch from heaven as they build little statues of you, you martyr, but nothing will have changed. Is that what you wanted?"

Enjolras did not want to admit that this girl who had probably never stepped foot in a school room was right – he simply stood dumbfounded, his mouth slightly open for a second or two before asking, "What do you propose I do, then?"

"I think you ought to go back to school." Enjolras squinted, unsure if this was meant as an insult, but was not left to wonder long as Eponine, in trademark fashion, simply continued speaking. "You could not change everyone's lives all at once, but you can change them one at a time, can you not?"

Enjolras paused to wonder what she meant – and it did not take long for it to make sense to him. He was in school, after all, to study law, but had never intended on being an attorney – because what was an attorney but a man who became fat from the suffering of others? But Eponine's thoughts were, in their simplistic little way, so very true. So very different from the plans he had made for himself, but so very true.

"I've impressed you," Eponine said with a grin. "I knew I would. I may not be smart, but I know a great deal about people, you see."

It stung a bit to admit that Eponine's way might work, and Enjolras was reluctant to accept it. It was certainly not the way he had hoped to succeed, but after his failure, what choice did he have? He had not succeeded in his cause. He had not even succeeded in dying for his cause. Eponine was definitely not the figure he had envisioned as acting the Virgil to his Dante in this, his darkest hour, but her words – her appraisal of his failed efforts – were the first he had heard in all these days that made any sense at all.

"Tell me more of what you think, 'Ponine," he said, finally uncrossing his arms when he spoke to her. Eponine gave a quiet yelp of smug delight and obliged. The pair made their way to the sitting room, all the while with Enjolras listening to Eponine's appraisal of practically everything he had said in his fiery speeches at the Café Musain. Her memory was astounding, and so was her simplistic shrewdness.

"When people are hungry or hurt or mourning, or when they are greedy and desiring, they are not philosophers," she said at some point in their conversation, though her voice was now slower and sleepy as she sat in a chaise across the table from Enjolras. "They're just stupid little things like me," she chuckled. "They don't think the way you do when their stomachs are empty, and they don't think about the nature of the universe when all they want is the money from someone else's pocket. Rich or poor. It's true," she yawned.

"You're not stupid," was the only answer Enjolras was able to provide before he was plagued with a yawn himself. Eponine scoffed a little, and mumbled something before she found her eyes drifting shut again.

* * *

_A/N's_

_Happy New Year to all! I'm glad that I have some people reading this story already, despite it being its very early infancy. I did receive a question on Tumblr about if this is movie or musical or book Les Mis. I put it into the book fandom because I do want to incorporate some of the bits of the book left out of the musical. I haven't yet seen the film – still a broke college student, I'm afraid – but I will most definitely try next month!_


	4. Chapter 4

After nearly a week, Enjolras was not sure if Eponine was completely obnoxious or absolutely brilliant – day after day, she chided him that he ought to return to school, despite his insistence that it was far too soon, that people would still be waiting to arrest him. She would scoff, and tell him that perhaps he was thinking a bit too highly of himself.

"The revolution mattered, but now that it's over, they won't even remember your face," she explained as they again spoke over breakfast, and Enjolras found her bluntness insufferable at times. He was, by nature, ever the gentleman - he had made a point in his daily endeavors never to harbor anger towards a woman, and never to speak harshly of or towards them. Eponine, however, seemed to test that composure, as she did not hesitate the way a woman would. She spoke with a sort of boyishness that would have perhaps been charming if it was not directed towards him.

Marius found their exchanges amusing, and indeed their chatter helped to fill the loneliness that was left by Cosette's prolonged absence. His grandfather had recently returned, and though M. Gillenormand had met Eponine in the past, she had never lingered long. Now, she amused him – she insisted on cleaning, despite the fact that he had maids in the house, and never left a spot of food left on the plates given to her. He regarded her and her child-like amusement a bit like a wind-up doll. Marius was surprised to find such warmth in his grandfather, who held the revolution in such disdain – he came to believe that had it not been for Eponine, the man would have not allowed Enjolras to remain in his home.

With Enjolras reluctant to walk out of the house for fear (warranted or not) for his life, the days of this recent week had fallen into an amusing routine in which Eponine was sure she had done more talking than she ever did in her entire life. Always the same thing – what do you think of this, Eponine? What do you think of that?

It took a great deal of time for her to realize that they did not continue to ask so they could poke fun at her, but that they actually found her thoughts interesting. Monsieur Gillenormand would even help her read the newspaper – the words in it were still a bit larger than the ones she knew, and pertained to things she had never heard of before – she could talk with the men at the table about what was going on in the world. In this way, the home began to feel a bit like a boarding house, and Eponine herself nearly felt like she was a student, just like Marius and Enjolras.

Once or twice, Eponine also chided that Marius ought to return to school as well – she enjoyed hearing all the fancy things the boys had to say about what they learned in school, and from time to time she remembered a bit of it as well. Marius said that he would not for the time being, as he was now a married man and had to attend to other things – he was of sufficient mind, of course, to help his aging grandfather with his business, overseeing several farms in the countryside.

Enjolras, however, seemed to be worn down by Eponine's constant reminders after some time and one day decided to try and return to the university. He rose before the sun and went on his way before Eponine even awoke – it was the rare occasion that the waif slept through the night. She was simply informed in the morning at breakfast by Monsieur Gillenormand that their friend had gone off to try and see if they would take him again at the school.

"And about time," the old man said as he adjusted the buttons on his travelling coat, preparing to go on another business trip. Eponine wondered how his rickety knees could even carry him on all these trips. When he left, she made her way into the parlor where she found Marius, sitting on his own and reading a piece of paper. She now realized that they were alone in the house – and the idea saddened her. Oh, how nice it would be to be his wife, she could not help but think. How nice it would be if this was the house she shared with him.

"What are you reading?" she asked, interrupting her own thoughts by speaking and sitting in a chair across the table from him.

"It's a letter from Cosette," he said with a sad smile. "She'll be away a bit longer, I'm afraid. But her Papa's sister is doing a bit better. Did I tell you that Tante Jeanne was ninety-four years old?"

"You did," Eponine nodded. "That's an awful long time to live."

"Yes. Yes, it is," Marius nodded absently. The look on his face was one that seemed to hide a great deal of pain – Eponine, after all, knew it well. She felt a bit angry at Cosette in this present moment. There were times that Eponine felt bad for being so horrid to her when they were children, but this was not one of those times. Eponine had, after all, worked so hard to allow them to be together, because she wanted Marius to be happy, and only Cosette could make him happy. Wasn't she happy? Wasn't she grateful?

Eponine did as she had so often before – she sat quietly, while Marius thought and thought of Cosette. Suddenly, she found that she missed Enjolras' presence a great deal, because their chatter, even their occasional bickering, was a welcome distraction from her proximity to Marius at any given point of the day.

Marius, as things were, felt strangely incomplete still – and he wondered if he would always feel this way. First, he had Cosette, but his friends were gone. Now, he had his friends, but Cosette had gone away – and even worse, was choosing to stay away. They were married after all, she explained, and they had the rest of their lives together, but she would only have a short time left with her Papa's family. Now, she wrote that Tante Jeanne's son Mathieu – her Papa's nephew whom he had been imprisoned in attempts to feed – agreed to stay with them after his mother passed on. Somewhere in this, Marius was meant to find the joy of a newlywed, but could not bring himself to do so. Somewhere along the way, the joy he shared in his wife's discoveries had waned, and he found himself longing for the sense of exhilaration and excitement of when he was only just finding his Cosette – could it be that it was only just over a month ago that he was a schoolboy making a fool of himself over a girl that he did not even know while his friends were planning a revolution? How quickly things changed, he thought sadly.

"I'm happy to have you and Enjolras here," Marius said suddenly. "You know, it gets terribly lonely. I'd almost forgotten what it was like, before Cosette, I mean," he chuckled. Eponine mimicked the gesture half-heartedly, as she remembered the time before Cosette well enough. Before Cosette, in the few months she had been good friends with Marius, he had more time to entertain Eponine's joking teasing, and while he still treated her much like a younger sister, he did not speak so much of another girl, and she could still once in a while trick herself into believing that perhaps he was a little bit in love with her but did not know it yet.

"It does. Get lonely, I mean," Eponine affirmed. "I miss my mother and father at times. And Azelma. And Gavroche…" she said, her voice trailing off. It was now that Marius remembered how terribly sad Eponine's life was – and he remembered telling her father, before ordering him to remove himself from Paris, that he did not deserve her. While Marius did not love her in the way that he now knew she had wished him to, he meant every word of what he said to old Thenardier. Eponine, in her way, was too good for the life she had been born into. "I know very well what it's like to miss people."

"What do you do about it?" Marius asked his dear friend.

"Nothing." Eponine shrugged. "You simply miss them."

Marius, perhaps, was lucky enough to have the luxury of feeling awkward at the appropriate times – there was an awkwardness to speaking with her, having seen her so close to death, having realized her love for him, having already mourned her loss before the fact and now speaking with her as though nothing had changed. Eponine, however, was accustomed to placing herself wherever she fit, and sometimes for the better, she lacked the social savvy to feel awkward when others would. Marius could tell easily now that nothing had changed – that she still loved him, and that she was well aware that he did not love her back in the same way, but still loved her as a friend nonetheless. There was a strange security that came with knowing this, knowing that it remained stable and the same. Though a tiny fleck of him felt guilty for it, he felt grateful that despite everything, she was still his 'Ponine, his best friend who cared for him deeply and would do anything for him. He was thankful for her, especially now – even after he had all but dashed all of any hope she may have possessed that he would love her, she still remained a faithful, loyal friend. He had feared, upon seeing her alive, that she would no longer care for him – that knowing he was married would finally cause her to move on, and he did not want such a thing.

On the contrary, Eponine was thankful for her M'sieur Marius now perhaps even more than before – because he took her in when there was no place else for her to go, because he gave her the opportunity to be around people who cared for what she had to say, who found enjoyment in her company. This – this was something she had never before felt in her life, and it was her M'sieur Marius who made it possible for her.

* * *

Arriving back at the university felt unreal to Enjolras – he no longer felt like a schoolboy, after all. He had convinced himself that he had done something greater, that he had transcended all of this schoolwork and busywork – but upon entering, he found that Eponine had been correct. There were a few glances at him, and a few pats on the back, but apart from this, he went with no more recognition than before.

Just over two weeks of absence from his classes earned him strange looks from his professors, who had clearly expected him not to return – but Enjolras was a good student, and they had faith that he would catch up with his coursework. It was almost insulting. He should have been a hero by now, but instead, he was still another schoolboy, sitting at a desk, reading books and writing papers.

He returned to M. Gillenormand's estate at the end of the day and felt the strange urge to simply drink and be drunk and never think of this day again – and this was a grave change, for Enjolras, ever the austere, almost unreal figurehead of the idealists, was strongly opposed to inebriation, or indeed anything that distracted him from the mission of restoring prosperity to the people of France. Hoping his friend would not mind if he simply helped himself, he walked into the kitchen, only to find that Marius had already found his way into his grandfather's liquor cabinet.

"Where is Eponine?" he asked, though he was already almost automatically helping himself to his glass. It seemed strange right now, to be drinking only with Marius and not with all the others, but he was so genuinely perturbed by the circumstances of his return to the school that it hardly mattered.

"She went out with the cook to the marketplace – she couldn't breathe staying inside for so long, she said," Marius stated, taking another swig from the glass of scotch he had poured for himself before handing the bottle to Enjolras. "What's troubling you, then?"

Enjolras chuckled before taking a hearty drink of his own, and he groaned a bit as the liquor made its way down his throat. "Nothing. Nothing has happened – it's been only a few weeks since we made our stand and they remember nothing." He took another swig and gave a humorless laugh. "Do you realize what that means?"

Marius was silent and looked at his friend, gently raising his eyebrows, and Enjolras gave a pained expression before he was able to continue. "It means I lead our friends to the slaughter for no reason at all," he explained through gritted teeth, no longer able to look Marius in the eye. "And if I had died as well, I'm sure no one would hold me at fault, but as it is – I'm alive, and they are not."

Marius reached out and clapped a hand on his friend's shoulder. He knew this feeling well – he had felt it himself. "I'm alive. 'Ponine is alive. I have long since forgiven you, and I'm sure she has as well. And wherever our friends are, I do not doubt that they have forgiven you."

There was a long silence and stillness between the pair, almost a moment of prayer and communion with the souls of their friends. It was a good while before Enjolras spoke.

"A toast, then. To Grantaire."

The pair took a drink, and Marius raised his glass again. "To Courfeyrac."

Another drink.

"To Jehan."

"To Feuilly."

"To Gavroche."

They continued toasting and drinking and toasting and drinking for each of their fallen friends, but by the time they had tallied through the long list of the fallen, they were both thoroughly inebriated and frankly had no desire to stop drinking, for this was the first time in a good while they felt completely relieved of their respective burdens. And so, they continued toasting.

"To Galileo!"

"To Plato!"

"To Socrates!"

They had soon gone on to begin raising a toast to each saint they could remember, and others they weren't even sure had ever existed, when Eponine walked into the kitchen through the servants' entrance with the cook, carrying armfuls of vegetables.

"Heavens, the both of you," she said, shooing away the cook to spare him from staring too long at the sight of the two young men sitting drunk on the floor. "I'm not going to clean up, you know. I'm certainly not either of your mothers."

She hustled around, placing the vegetables down on the table and yanking the both of them to their feet – she was more than accustomed to dealing with drunks, as her days in her father's old inn had trained her well. She reached out and swatted both of the men a couple of times on the face and let out an exasperated little noise.

"Christ, 'Ponine," Enjolras chortled, reaching blindly for the glass on the table and nearly knocking it over before Eponine snatched it out of the way. "Don't be so droll. You needn't be miserable all the time!"

"Have a drink, 'Ponine," Marius grinned lazily, holding out the bottle in his hand. "I'd just like a drink with my friends! You'll do that for me, won't you?"

And for perhaps the first time, Eponine felt affronted by a request made of her by her M'sieur Marius. Marius and Enjolras had erstwhile been the two most dignified young men she knew – one, steadfast in his dedication to love of country and the other, steadfast in his dedication to love in all its forms. She had seen them almost as mythical figures – perfect figures – that were now reduced to a pair of slovenly drunk college boys in a rich man's kitchen. It felt almost as though a spell had been broken. Perhaps she had been around rich people far too much, or perhaps she had been reading far too much, but for whatever reason she suddenly felt the rose-colored poor-girl haze that enveloped her vision of these boys dissipating into nothingness. It was nearly funny, seeing them this way for the first time, but more than that, it was disappointing.

"I will not," Eponine said resolutely, and it hurt a little, for it was the first time she had spoken the words to Marius. It hurt even more because he didn't seem to realize this at all. "I am going to bed, and I hope you're able to mop yourselves up off of that floor when you are finished," she huffed indignantly before storming off to bed.

* * *

_A/N's_

_First of all, I want to thank everyone who has sent me messages on Tumblr about liking this story - I was worried it wouldn't fare well with fans, especially new Les Mis fans from the movie. I'm slowly but surely working on new chapters, so I don't mind if you pester me to update from time to time, as I do get distracted by other projects and it helps to have you all keeping me on track. I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year celebration!  
_


	5. Chapter 5

"Messieurs? Messieurs, are you awake?"

Marius and Enjolras had managed in fact to drag themselves drunkenly to the parlor and fall asleep there with a bit of composure – at least, more than was possible on the kitchen floor. The housemaid, Maude, was only just coming along to rouse them from their slumber by throwing open the heavy curtains and casting sunlight into the room, which garnered loud protests from the two boys.

"Messieurs, it's mademoiselle Eponine," she said, tying the curtains back. "She says she will not come out of her room ever again."

Groaning as they opened their eyes, Marius and Enjolras glanced at one another and immediately realized that they must have made quite the pigs of themselves the previous night, and though they were tousled and still smelled of last night's _boissons_, made their way up the staircase to Eponine's room. Finding the door shut, Enjolras nodded Marius forward, expecting that he was the one Eponine would most likely forgive first. Marius stepped forward and knocked on her door.

"It's me, 'Ponine. Would you come out?"

"If that is Marius outside, then I'll not be speaking with him."

Marius shot Enjolras a shocked glance – he wasn't sure if this was Eponine at all. Not hoping for any better luck, Enjolras stepped forward in his friend's place and cleared his throat. "Come on now, Eponine, you needn't be so upset. It was just a bottle of drink between friends! I've something that'll boost your spirits."

"I don't need it."

"I'll bring you to school with me today."

There were a few seconds of silence before the old wood door creaked open, and Eponine peered her head out.

"That is not funny at all, M'sieur Enjolras," she said, trying very hard to hide a smile that was beginning to creep onto her features. "I am only a girl, and girls are not allowed in your school."

"Then we will not let them know you are a girl," he said with a shrug. "Why should you not be allowed to go to school? It's a disservice to you, and it's a disservice to France. You are brighter than half the boys there."

"Then only the other half shall laugh at me," she grumbled, crossing her arms over herself.

"You've made a convincing boy before. Just a hat and some trousers and no one will know the better."

Eponine could not be sure what convinced her to don men's clothing again – heaven knew it hadn't gone well at all the first time. But the idea of being able to see a real school, to see the world that Marius and the others walked about, even just once. The worst they could do if they found out, after all, was make her leave – and she would wait outside for Enjolras and give the cad a swift kick in the shin.

"Who is this you've brought with you?" a stout old professor asked as Enjolras brought her into a classroom. He glanced at Eponine appraisingly, and she adjusted her posture to appear as boyish as possible.

"He is my cousin. Antoine." Enjolras explained. "He's visiting from Provence and I'm showing him around Paris. He'll just be sitting in on your class, _Professeur _Brisbois."

Brisbois eyed Eponine still and squinted a bit, and Eponine had to do her best not to squirm under his gaze, feeling sure that she would be kicked out. In her mind she bemoaned the fact that it was so early in the day to be kicked out, and she would have to wait for hours before being able to give Enjolras the kick she owed him.

"Not much to see except for filth and rodents and prostitutes, I'm afraid," Brisbois chuckled, and Eponine laughed as well to hide the sigh of relief she released before taking a seat next to Enjolras. It was believable enough, she realized that she – even with her feminine features – could be Enjolras's cousin; he had such soft, youthful, almost feminine features of his own, and so no one seemed to question their relation in the slightest.

School, Eponine found, was very different from the way she had imagined it. The boys sat, listening to Brisbois at the front of the class talk and talk for hours, jotting down notes and only pausing to ask him to repeat dates or numbers. This was where Enjolras learned his lofty ideals? This was the place that turned him from an ordinary boy into a hero? Eponine could not yet see how.

"_Antoine._"

She snapped to attention when she heard the name that Enjolras had given her, and blinked as Brisbois brought his gaze to meet hers. He cleared his throat to speak and said, "As our guest, I'd like to hear what you think."

"About what, M'sieur?" she stammered, attempting to deepen her voice.

"About our _fair_ city," Brisbois chuckled with a sweeping gesture of one arm. "You're not from here, after all. Your perspective is still fresh, and I think we would be privileged to hear it."

Eponine glanced at Enjolras, who simply raised his eyebrows a bit and gestured for her to go on, but she hadn't the slightest idea of where to begin. "I'm not sure what you're asking, m'sieur."

"Well, take for example, that quaint attempt at a revolt, just weeks ago," Brisbois said offhandedly, and Eponine saw Enjolras' hands clench into fists under his desk at such a condescending reference to _his _revolution – and strangely, Eponine felt a sort of anger rise in her too, for she did not expect that college men were so unkind, especially after knowing Marius and Enjolras, who were so good. "I'm sure you heard of it, even in Provence – none of the poor in the streets came to their aid, did they?"

"Very few, I heard," Eponine said hesitantly.

"And so, Antoine, would that not suggest that perhaps it was a bit foolish?" Brisbois asked. "Would it not suggest that perhaps the poor do not want a revolution?"

Eponine could see that in his desk, Enjolras was doing what he could to contain his fury – and while she was indeed still a bit upset with Marius for his words the previous night, she still felt protective over him, and that protectiveness, she decided, applied to those he held dear. Enjolras was his very best friend, and Eponine would not allow this fat old professor to make a mockery of the most noble deed Eponine had ever heard of.

"Professeur Brisbois, I do not think that at all," she said sternly, straightening herself up. "Let us say that, God forbid, the consumption were to strike us all this evening, and no one came to your class tomorrow, does that make you a silly man for counting on them to arrive?"

"I would not say so."

"If you were to put out an assignment for us, but there was a new tax levied on papers and ink so that we chose to feed our families first, would it speak ill of you as a professor that no one brought their assignments?"

"I do not believe it would," Brisbois huffed. "But perhaps you are not familiar with Paris. There is no plague of the consumption as we speak, and there are no new taxes –"

"I believe the old taxes will suffice."

The class let out a flurry of chuckles at Eponine's statement, and she felt a sort of warmth inside her – they were amused by her. They accepted her. They laughed, but not because she was silly. For the first time, it seemed that people laughed in approval of what she said – and oh, what a feeling it was.

"Perhaps I am not from where you are from, Professeur, but it does not mean I do not understand," she said with slight indignation. Enjolras, who previously had been almost shaking in his fury at Brisbois, sat almost gaping at the young woman – at _Antoine_. "I think the poor would like a revolution very much –I don't think they find it silly at all," she said. "I do not think there is a single thief in the street who does not dream of a better life – or else, why would they become thieves?"

Now, it seemed, that everyone was quiet – and Eponine had half the mind to stop talking, as she thought Enjolras was being poked in the back. His back was arched and his chest puffed out over his desk – Eponine would not understand that it was a gesture of pride. Still, captured by the momentum of being listened to for once, she continued.

"But there are people in the streets who cannot afford to be martyrs, because they have families who will starve without them," she said. "And if they were to make martyrs of themselves, their families would be thrown on the streets for every ounce of riches they have saved will be used to bury their dead – and then what? I do not doubt that every soul on the streets that night prayed for those boys to succeed," Eponine said sternly. "Even if only in secret. Even if only from the safety of their little shacks without windows, because there is a tax on windows," she added, shaking her head. "I think the better question is – why did all of you – all of us, I mean, who have plenty extra to risk… why didn't we answer as well? Because we may not be rich, but at least we are richer than _them_? Because a part of you wants to keep it that way?"

Now, a silence fell over the schoolroom. Brisbois' face was now red, and a vein was protruding in his neck as though his heavily starched collar was choking him. He breathed a few times through his nostrils before uttering three words through tight lips.

"Class is dismissed."

Eponine felt a little guilty that Brisbois called class off because of her, and out of embarrassment for the scene she had caused, she scurried out of the schoolbuilding ahead of Enjolras, walking outside and adjusting the hat on her head. She was startled when suddenly, she felt a hand clap onto her back, and the sound of a voice cheering.

"'Ponine, you were brilliant!" Enjolras said, saying her name more quietly so they would not be overheard. Eponine was surprised to see for the first time, a wide grin on his handsome face. "You showed that old buffoon, Brisbois."

"I did not like the way he spoke of all of your hard work, not when you've told me all about it," she said frankly. "It was very unkind."

"Did I not tell you that you were brighter than the boys here?" Enjolras asked as the pair began walking down the streets of Paris – scenery which was familiar to them, of course, but now seemed much more exciting. "You're one of the brightest people I know, 'Ponine. Why, I think we could keep this up –"

"I don't think I shall like to return there," Eponine chuckled, removing the hat from her head and shaking her hair free now that they were a short distance away from the school. "I hadn't known that professors were so very unkind. School is for people like you, who are brave," Eponine shrugged. Enjolras chuckled a little at the idea that Eponine did not think herself just as brave.

"I am not really bright at all," Eponine insisted. "But I am different, and because I am different, they do not know how to answer me. How nice it is, though, to pass as being bright like you and Marius," she grinned brightly, looking upwards a bit and shutting her eyes so that the sunlight warmed her face, though it really didn't need it. She was still flushed herself from her exchange with Brisbois.

She looked a great deal younger when she smiled that way, Enjolras noted. Her face finally seemed to match the childish amusement constantly present in her demeanor. She was actually a pleasant-looking thing when she was well cared for. It almost a bit inspiring, he thought, that out of the utter squalor with which she had become to be associated before, she was actually a sweet, healthy thing now – it was precisely the transformation he had hoped to see in his beloved country. If it was possible for Eponine, it was possible for all of France.

* * *

_A/N's_

_Hello everyone! I hope you enjoyed this chapter - I actually had a lot of fun writing the school scene. I did get a rather annoyed message from someone asking why Cosette is not in the story, so I want to address that by letting everyone know that Cosette will be entering and playing a major part in future chapters - her absence is just essential to plot for a while. She is visiting with her old, dying aunt - Valjean's sister - and needed to spend time with her before she passed. I imagine she's off somewhere learning more about her Papa, so let her have her fun until it's her turn to come into the story._

_Anyway, I'm hoping to have a new chapter for you all soon. Until then, cheers!_


	6. Chapter 6

Eponine no longer had any desire for Antoine to make another appearance at the university – her curiosity about school was now sated, and being satisfied, she found no reason to return. She had found her argument with Professor Brisbois out her on the spot, which she did not at all enjoy, and she decided that that such things were better left to people like Enjolras who clearly could stomach it as a regular happening.

She found instead that there was plenty to do while staying at home, and plenty to learn from hanging around the hired help – waiting on the rich, it turned out, was very different from robbing them. It was far less difficult, and for the first time in her life, the rich were exposed as a much friendlier sort. M. Gillenormand began treating Eponine almost as one of his own, for as childlike as she was, it brought a sort of productivity to his older year to teach her to read and write a little more. She was becoming more and more accustomed to what she considered a very leisurely life – helping to clean and cook only when she felt she had the energy, eating square meals, sleeping early, and waking when she pleased.

This particular morning, she woke up at an hour when the sun was already high, and she made her way downstairs just as the mail carrier was handing Marius the mail. He glanced over it, and Eponine peered over as she approached. "Another letter from Cosette?" she asked cautiously.

"No. It's for you, 'Ponine," he said, handing over what she now saw was a thick parcel wrapped in paper with an inscription scrawled on the front in familiar handwriting:

For Eponine, if she lives. Thenardier.

"It's from my father!" Eponine said with wide eyes, snatching the parcel from Marius' hands and undoing the twine as she sat on the nearby chaise. She tore open the paper covering the parcel and found several stacks of small pieces of paper bound together with twine tumbling out onto her lap, some of them falling onto the floor. Money – thousands of francs.

Eponine stared up at Marius questioningly – she did not know where her family had gone, or what they were doing now, but – her father had _remembered_ her, and the thought of such a thing struck Eponine so that she was almost shaking in surprise.

Marius approached and picked up a paper that had been hidden inside and had fallen to the ground when Eponine had torn it open and held it out to her. She squinted at it, and read, "Find your mother. Azelma gives her regards."

And that was all. That was all her father had to say to her – and her mother was not even with them. Eponine did not delude herself into thinking that her parents were not bad people, but they were her parents nonetheless, and there was a time, long ago, that they had loved and cared for her.

"This is a small fortune, 'Ponine," Marius said, helping her gather up the money which had fallen to the ground. "What are you going to do with it?"

"I think," she began thoughtfully, "I should like to hide it until I am a little bit smarter."

So, he helped her go through some of the old rooms in the old house to find a large jewelry box that had belong to some deceased relative of his who he knew would no longer miss it, and he helped her to fit all of the money inside of it. Then, they tucked it underneath an old vanity dresser.

Eponine, of course, was not excited as one would expect her to be – after all, she had been poor for such a large portion of her life, and raised by parents who better personified the term 'money-grubbing' than possibly anyone else in Paris; why should she not be elated to see such a sum? Eponine, however, took little interest in things that dealt with money. Those things were better left to her father. She helped her father in his schemes to get it, and she left him to handle it – she surely had no idea what she was going to do with it now. She felt a bit confused when Marius suggested that she sit and write the things she'd like to do with it, and was still staring at a blank piece of paper when M. Gillenormand came downstairs with a book under his arm. He sat down across from Eponine and grinned as he greeted her good morning.

"Read this," he said, gently pushing the old leatherbound book across the table to Eponine. Eponine chuckled a little – Marius had always described him otherwise, but from what she could see, Gillenormand was simply a kindly old man who would have made a very kind old schoolteacher had he not had such a knack for business.

The book that he showed her today, however, was not one of the usual sort where she could stumble through the words and piece together what was being said. She stammered through a couple of words, but did not know what she was saying. She squinted a bit and attempted to press through, but to no avail.

"This is called Latin, 'Ponine," he said. "It is another language – I thought you would read a line or two, and I would tell you what the words mean. It is a story, you see."

Eponine was not sure how this could be a story, as it did not yet make any sense, but she was sure that Gillenormand would not play a trick on her this way, and so she obliged. She quickly found that this was indeed an interesting story, and it was even more amusing to see the joy that an old man like M. Gillenormand took from the activity, as though she were a little child and not the grown woman of about twenty years that she truly was. His treatment of her was, in fact, even more grandfatherly than his treatment of Marius, though he loved the young man no less.

So enthralled had Eponine become by this new project with M. Gillenormand that she did not even notice Enjolras arrive from school. He had been disappointed, true enough, that Eponine could not be convinced to return, but appeared to have passed through this bad humor unscathed. Hearing Eponine speaking, he took a slight detour to the dining room, assuming her to be speaking with Marius, only to come across the girl reading in Latin from a book.

He felt oddly gleeful at the sight – by the thought that someone who was so accepting of her origins in the dregs of society was harboring such a font of potential. Sometimes it was almost as though she was not so much a person, but a symbol to him.

The funny thing about Enjolras was that his ideals were not reined in by political persuasions – he simply held his ideals without prioritization, his ideals that all people deserved all the best of all things. While he was no feminist and would never identify as such, he also felt a strange ache in his soul that women in the streets who, like Eponine, were perhaps bright and charming and full of potential, were instead focused solely on seeking out husbands. This was, perhaps, why he had never bothered to busy himself with women. It was not so much chastity as it was disdain – disappointment in their inaction. To him, all people were capable of revolution – and even more importantly, all people were responsible for one.

The following day, Enjolras rose to find Eponine in the sitting room in the clothes she was still borrowing from the old things of Marius' deceased aunt – she had no intent on purchasing her own clothes, as she saw no point in it.

"I'm going to walk with you today, then," she said with resolution, for Eponine was not the sort to seek permission for things she had already decided upon. Not even allowing Enjolras the opportunity to ask, she added, "I'm going to find my mother. I'm sure she would not leave Paris."

Seeing no reason to refuse, Enjolras obliged. Out of habit, as Eponine was still a woman before all else, he walked a few paces behind her until she finally, wordlessly branched off in her own direction. Thinking nothing of it, Enjolras continued on his way to the university, and when his lessons were complete, he found Eponine outside waiting for him.

"I found her. She is living at Rue Platon, and I will be returning tomorrow," she said simply. And so became their habit every day – they conversed very little, but they did not bicker the way they did in exchanges past. She simply walked with him in the morning, and waited for him in the afternoons. He wondered, of course, why she did not simply stay longer with her mother, but found out himself soon enough.

One day, Professor Brisbois began to feel ill in the middle of one of his lectures, and so he dismissed the class early yet again. As Eponine had not yet arrived to wait for him, he considered it only courteous that she should make his way to Rue Platon and wait for her to finish her visit with her mother. He, of course, had no intention of speaking with Madame Thenardier, as everyone knew the reputation of the family, and everyone knew better than to be platonic with them in any way. Though he had never said anything to Eponine, considering it inappropriate at any time it could possibly have been deemed relevant in conversation, he had heard plenty of whispers about what had become of Madame Thenardier in his days wandering the streets in secret, prior to catching Eponine escaping from the hospital. After she and her husband had been caught masquerading as the Baron and Baroness du Thenard at Marius' wedding, she had been left to take the blame for a fraudulent purchase made by her husband and served a brief time in jail. Thankfully for Eponine, Enjolras considered, that she appeared to have been quickly released, if she was indeed here.

After two hours of roaming Rue Platon, however, he realized that he would have no luck waiting for her until she came out of her mother's house. He calmly went to lean against a nearby cart, but misjudged the amount of weight he laid on it, causing it to shift and roll just a bit. The sound of the groaning wooden wheels was immediately followed by a female voice letting out a string of very unladylike curses.

"You could have run me over. You nearly took off my foot," Eponine said in a shrill voice, standing up. It was evident that she had been hiding there behind the cart for some time without being noticed.

"'Ponine, what are you doing?" Enjolras asked with an uncharacteristically casual tone. "Where is your mother?"

And in response to his question, there was the loud squawk of an unpleasant female voice coming from a carriage clacking down the streets that could only be attributed to Madame Thenardier. Upon hearing it, Eponine immediately ducked back to her hiding place behind the wooden cart, but this time taking a firm hold on the sleeve of Enjolras's shirt and tugging him down behind the cart as well.

"You must be quiet," she directed, as though there was no need for explanation. "Or we'll be heard, M'sieur Enjolras."

The carriage arrived and pulled up in front of one of the homes of Rue Platon, and a grey, bristly-bearded old man in fine clothing stepped out, giving Madame Thenardier his hand to assist her in exiting as well. As she exited, he gave her a swat on the rump, to which she responded with a yelp and a laugh.

"You see now, don't you?" Eponine asked, peering sneakily over the cart at her mother in her new finery with a quiet sort of sadness in her eyes that was very much like the Eponine with which Enjolras was more familiar. "She has a new life now and I did not want to bother her – but I did very much want to see her."

They did not return to Rue Platon again.


	7. Chapter 7

The concept of home is a funny thing, because it is never said what exactly defines it. Eponine, after all, knew home only as her family's residence at the Gorbeau House, as filthy as it was. Now, however, her father was clearly somewhere very far and had become very rich. Her mother had moved on and found a new home as well. Did that mean that this – Monsieur Gillenormand's home – was now her home as well?

In the weeks to come, Enjolras was finally assigned to study under a practicing attorney, and so he hardly slept – his new mentor, M. Laperriere, immediately put him to work reviewing copies of case dockets and quizzed him mercilessly every morning. It was said that once Enjolras was able to answer in a satisfactory manner, he would be allowed to participate in court as well, but Laperriere warned that he ran a tight ship, and that day would not come for perhaps many months. Enjolras had taken now to waiting until everyone was asleep, then pretending he was arguing the case himself in a courthouse. The feeling of being an apprentice – of being inadequate to practice anything in its fullness – was an unfamiliar one to Enjolras, and he wished to move past this stage with vehemence and speed. The price, however, was that he kept the house up at night, save for old Monsieur Gillenormand, who they were now convinced could have slept through a forty-day tempest and awaken with not the slightest idea.

Eponine, however, was accustomed to rousing from her sleep at the slightest noise – she had acquired the habit from many years of keeping watch as a child during her father's heists, as she learned her lesson quickly once when she fell asleep and did not warn them in time that the police were coming. Everyone got away, except for Montparnasse, who was arrested for the evening. After a sound beating, Eponine was assigned with getting him out of jail herself. After that night, she knew that she would never sleep through her assignments again.

And so it became that she would sometimes sit on the stairs and listen to Enjolras practicing his arguments and analyses of Laperriere's cases, careful not to be spotted. If she were to be seen, she decided, he would perhaps keep quiet at night and she would no longer be able to listen, and she was learning a great deal from listening. Granted, she did not always understand what he was saying, but if a word came about that she was not sure of, she would do her best to write it down and ask M. Gillenormand about it the following day. The arrangement worked out nicely, it turned out, because it seemed that the old man was home even more than usual now.

Tonight, however, Enjolras was unusually quiet. The only sound for hours was the rustling of papers, interspersed with the sound of disparaged grunts and harrumphs on his part. Then, for the first time in her recollection, she heard him curse – it was so unfamiliar, so comical even. That Eponine could not help but allow herself a chuckle, which in the quiet of near-midnight was easily overheard.

"I'm sorry, M'sieur Enjolras," Eponine said impishly when he quickly shifted his gaze towards her perch on the stairs. "But I could not help but watch you – I've never seen you this way," she laughed. Indeed, the dignified Enjolras, who was always the epitome of composure, seemed very much like a petulant child in the way he huffed and pouted over the puzzle before him. He, however, was far from amused. "Let me see it, then. I'd like to practice reading some more," Eponine said, plunking unceremoniously down the stairs and pulling the papers toward her. This particular case had to do with one M. Thierry who was asserting claim to land once owned by his grandfather, who left the estate pawned to the bank at the time of his death. The bank had since sold it to a baron in northern France, who refused to give up ownership of the property. Laperriere's firm was the assigned counsel for Thierry, who could barely afford his services. It was presumed that he would lose, and so the case was an easy one to hand off to an apprentice – it was a throwaway, a case not meant to be won. It would be just as easy, of course, for Enjolras to admit this, there would always be other cases, but as a matter of principle, he could not surrender. For him, this was a case of a deserving man of the lower middle class being deprived of his first semblance at upward mobility – his first and perhaps only chance for a better life. If he could not find a way to help this man, who would?

He felt a little exasperation towards Eponine for wasting his precious time, taking his papers from him. He had half the mind to yank them back from her childishly when she suddenly looked up, slapping her hand gently on the table.

"Well, it's simple, isn't it?" Eponine said, wrinkling her brow in confusion. Enjolras shook his head at her, feeling confident that anything she could possibly be thinking, he had thought many times before. It was simply not that simple at all. Whatever logic and fairness could be used would not be good enough for a jury and judge comprised of men who wanted nothing more than to see the baron win, because the baron's victory represented the preservation of their own way of life.

"That's because none of you rich boys know how to drive a hard bargain," Eponine grinned, shaking her head before beginning to write down notes in her hesitant, sometimes clumsy scrawl. "Give him this. You will win for sure."

The next day, Eponine trotted along unseen behind Enjolras on the way to Laperriere's firm just adjacent to the courthouse and settled herself outside- she had, after all, become very good at hiding. She was not, she told herself, being nosy, but rather preparing herself. After all, if her advice had turned out to be incorrect, it was best to be prepared for Enjolras's annoyance at her – and if she turned out to have been correct, she would be fully prepared to remind him that it was she – poor, wretched, uneducated Eponine – who told him so.

She caught sight that afternoon of Laperriere – a man of average height with a dark, reddish moustache that was too large for his face, exiting his law firm and shaking hands with a man, with Enjolras following at his heels.

"It appears we've won the Thierry case – who would have expected this?" the stranger chuckled. Laperriere, on the other hand openly guffawed.

"Well, I spent the entire night last night mulling over it, so I would hope so –"

"But M'sieur, it was my friend who –"

"Still there, my boy?" Laperriere asked Enjolras, who, next to him, looked very young and nearly intimidated indeed. Eponine held a hand over her mouth and chuckled a bit at the idea that Enjolras – brave, staunch Enjolras – was afraid of his mentor. "I gave you your assignment for the evening, did I not?"

"Monsieur." Enjolras became insistent. "It was not you who thought up the argument that won your case – you said it was a lost cause. It was my friend, Ep –"

But Laperriere did not even entertain Enjolras's argument, instead walking away with his associate without another word. Eponine, on the other hand, finally made her way out of the small alcove where she had been hiding and rapped her knuckles enthusiastically on Enjolras's shoulder.

"I heard you, you know," she grinned. "You called me your friend, M'sieur Enjolras. Am I really?"

"Why should you not be?" he snapped back, clearly in a bad humor. He quickly caught himself and turned back to Eponine. "Your argument won the case. 'Ponine. But he won't recognize that I even gave it to him."

"Well, why should it matter?" Eponine asked, her brow furrowing. "I thought you only wanted to help Monsieur Thierry get his grandpapa's land back, and if Laperriere won, then you've done it, haven't you?" Enjolras paused thoughtfully, let out a deep breath, and nodded in concession to Eponine's line of thought. He was beginning to think that if only the school would permit it, she was better suited to be a lawyer instead.

He also found that he did not grow as tired of her childish ramblings as they made their way back to Gillenormand's house again. In fact, it no longer seemed as nonsensical as he had once thought – she was shrewd and clever, untouched by convention or socialization so that she simply _was_. She existed, and though her existence was a sad one, thought with such simplicity that she was still able to find some semblance of joy in it.

"Why aren't you angry?" he asked honestly, his arms crossed over himself as he walked. Eponine, on the other hand, had her arms slightly spread, almost like a plant soaking up the sun. She glanced over at him with a child-like expression, and he cleared his throat before beginning to clarify. "You're the one who won that case for Laperriere. Even I'm angry, 'Ponine. You deserved credit for what you did."

"If I expected credit for everything I ever did, that would be a lot of debts to keep track of. Perhaps smart boys like you are able to remember so many things, but as for me – I'm not a smart creature at all."

"And I suppose that's why you did all you did for Marius," Enjolras said before thinking. Eponine's expression, to his surprise, suddenly grew a bit angry.

"I don't think it's your business why I did so much for Marius," she said. "But perhaps, yes. It does not matter."

"I think you're a bit smarter than him."

"If you think that, then I'm afraid I may be a bit smarter than you," Eponine huffed. "And m'sieur, I know that I am not very smart at all."

Enjolras knew that it was a lost cause, attempting to argue this point with the girl. People in love, he found, were extremely difficult to deal with – because falling in love made one stubborn and more than a bit thick. Not wanting to worsen her grousing as they reached Gillenormand's garden gate, he simply held open the entrance for her in the way that proper etiquette dictated and allowed her to enter first. When they reached the main foyer, however, they were greeted by a very pale, very frantic Marius who ran to them quickly and took a hold of Eponine's thin, sinewy forearm.

"'Ponine, my grandfather is not well," he said in a breathless voice. "He may not last long, but he wants to see you."

And so, she found her whisked up the stairs to the old man's bedchamber where he was accompanied by a doctor who quickly departed with a somber nod to Marius. Enjolras, who had trailed a respectful distance behind, stepped out of the way to allow the man to exit, knowing that his departure meant that indeed, all had been done that could be done and that the old man was being given his chance to say his goodbyes. Eponine and Marius each took a seat at either side of Monsieur Gillenormand, and he reached out for both of their hands.

"Eponine, there is a paper there," he said in a frail voice, and Eponine found herself shaking as she obliged by pulling it and setting it on the bed near his leg to look at it. "It is my will. I want to leave you half of everything I have, my child –"

"Monsieur, I cannot –"

"Because you have brought joy and purpose to an old man's last days," he said with a graying shadow of a smile, quivering as he struggled to grasp Eponine's hand. "And it will be yours when you find a husband. Half of all I own," he wheezed. "You must sign it."

Eponine shakily groped around for the fountain pen on the bedside vanity, nearly knocking over the bottle of ink, and held it over to paper to do as the old man wished, but quickly glanced around in confusion.

"I have never signed anything before," she said, her face reddening in embarrassment which brought a small, almost imperceptible chuckle to the old man's throat. Enjolras stepped forward from his place in the doorway and crouched next to Eponine, placing his hand over hers.

"I will help you," he said, and Eponine stared at him questioningly as his hand clasped tightly over hers, bringing it to the paper and slowly, meticulously writing her name in an elegant scrawl which much resembled his own. After it was done, he quietly retreated to his place yet again, but Eponine stared after him for a short time longer until Monsieur Gillenormand's grip on her hand grew urgent again.

"You are like my own child. If I could have made my thickheaded Marius love you, I would have," he said with an almost misplaced laugh which caused Eponine to lower her gaze even further, and Marius to briefly turn his face away in slight embarrassment. "But I am thankful that you have been his friend. And because you both must share everything I own for as long as you live, I will die sure that he will care for you, and you for him," the old man said with a smile. "Will you do one thing for me?"

"Yes, monsieur?"

"Will you sing an old man a lullaby as I fall asleep?" he asked with a weak smile. "I've not heard a lullaby in a very long time."

Eponine flushed a bit more, but obliged, gripping the old man's hand and leaning towards him, placing a light kiss on his forehead before singing one of the few old songs she knew – she had once sung it as a lullaby to her younger brothers as well. "_Mon amant me delaisse, o gue vive la rose. Mon amant me delaise, o gue vive la rose. Je ne sais pas pourquoi… vive la rose et le lilas… Il va-t-en voir une autre, o gue vive la rose…"_

The old man smiled a bit as Eponine's small voice sang him the little song, a bit clumsily, and as she sang, he looked over towards Marius, letting go of his hand. Marius bowed slightly and his grandfather placed a cold, wrinkled hand on his head.

"My grandson," he said with a fond smile. "Be happy always. Be happy," he said, and this was enough to reduce Marius to tears. He shook as he grandfather's hand passed to him whatever blessing he could muster. "I have always loved you, you know. Always."

He smiled at Marius, and peacefully as Eponine sang, his eyes fluttered shut just like falling asleep. The hand on Marius's head fell in a slow arc to the old man's side, and he was still. Eponine's singing stopped, and the room was silent for a few moments, save for the intermittent sound of one of them sniffing back tears. Eponine, still holding the old man's hand, glanced back over her shoulder at Enjolras to realize for the first time that he, the golden god of the revolution, was not immune to tears.

* * *

_A/N's_

_I hope you guys liked the chapter! The song Eponine sings to Monsieur Gillenormand is an old French song called "Vive la Rose", which is really pretty, and will come up again, so it might be a fun way to pass time if you'd like to look it up. Anyway, within the next couple of chapters, we will be seeing another familiar face, so stay tuned! Thank you everyone for all of your support and patience._


	8. Chapter 8

In the days that followed M. Gillenormand's passing, his will was not spoken of – and indeed, Eponine never felt inclined to speak to anyone about her last minute addition to it, as she knew the stipulation was that she would receive half of everything, should she ever be married. She knew that being married was hardly a possibility at all, for there were many women in the world like Cosette, and in her own calculations, all of the pretty girls would need to run out before anyone would view her as a prospective wife.

Eponine instead conducted herself as though she was hired help as guests came in and out of the home which now, to the extent of their knowledge belonged solely to Marius. Marius, acting the gracious host, entertained everyone's condolences, which were almost invariably accompanied by questions of where his lovely wife was, and why they had not seen her.

"Her aunt is in ill health," he would reply every time, "She has only a short time with her, and a lifetime with me, so it is only fair to allow her that time."

And indeed, everyone swooned about how loving a husband Marius Pontmercy made. Meanwhile, it seemed that hardly anyone paid any mind to Enjolras – these were parties for the rich and the bourgeoisie, and they certainly did not have high regard for a revolutionary college boy who they considered a threat to their own way of life. This was one of the rare instances that Enjolras held his tongue for anyone's sake – he merely retreated upstairs to continue his studies in the quiet. If the guests downstairs had no desire to speak with him, he had even less interest in speaking to them. If he were to show himself downstairs, he was sure that it would make this an even more difficult time for his friend, and while he was unyielding in his principles, in his devotion to justice and the mother country, he was also not heartless. He knew that there were, at times, things which took precedence. There was no decency in preventing good people from burying their dead in peace.

Eponine was oddly fascinated by the practice of mourning afforded to the rich – something strangely unfamiliar to someone like herself. How odd, she mused, that when someone passed away whom they hardly even knew, they set aside entire evenings to eat and socialize in the memory of that person, as though their death made time stop for a very small time – she knew that those who died in vain during the revolt were not afforded this luxury in anyone's home. There were no parties and dinners for them. No one could stop their lives to mourn. Even Marius did not have time to mourn, as he was rushing to be married, Eponine could not help but think.

"Isn't this that beggar girl?" One woman asked Marius in a sniffy voice after giving Eponine a long, appraising look. "Monsieur Gillenormand was kind enough to give her a job, bless his heart. I'm sure it's difficult for someone like her to find decent work."

Eponine's expression, which had long since been aimed solely at the floor as she carried a tray of food, did not change, but she did not move – Marius would have liked to stand up for her, just this once, to say that she was actually bright and interesting in her own way. His grandfather would have done it, he considered briefly. But doing so would cause a great deal of hullaballoo here, and this event was not to air out his grievances with anyone, or to correct or insult anyone who came to pay their respects.

"Yes, my grandfather was a very generous man," he nodded with a false smile. He looked up to give Eponine an apologetic glance, but she scampered away much like a scared alley cat before she could receive it.

She would understand, Marius decided. She was Eponine, after all, and she always understood.

* * *

"Cosette? Cosette, maman is shivering!"

Mathieu, the only surviving son of Tante Jeanne's, had quickly come to think of Cosette as his cousin – but because Cosette had gone to school at the convent, because she spoke so well and knew so much about the world, he treated her much like an older cousin, despite the fact that she was much younger.

He did not personally remember her mother's brother – but Mathieu had certainly heard much of his mother's gratitude for Jean Valjean. She spoke much of him, even now in her delirious state.

Graciously, Cosette did not seem to mind the time and effort – for there was a great deal of effort needed – spent caring for Tante Jeanne. She came in a hurry with a blanket and a cloth soaked in water, rushing to Mathieu's side and sitting in a rickety chair as she tended to her aunt. Even if not through blood, this was her family and in her father's name, she owed them her time and her loyalty.

"You do not need to be here," Mathieu said remorsefully. "I know Maman would not want to keep you from your husband. He has been so generous, allowing you to stay with us –"

"He does not decide what I can and cannot do," Cosette said with a warm smile, looking up briefly from her tending to the older woman in the bed. "I am not a child, and nor is he."

"You've only just been married, should you not be with him?"

Cosette sighed a little bit – Mathieu, out of guilt, pursued this line of question every day, and Cosette was beginning to recite the answers to his questions from memory without thinking at all. She did not know a great deal about being married, admittedly. Papa had never been married – the old innkeeper had a wife, and they seemed to be a stable enough married couple, but Cosette had no desire to think of them at all, let alone follow any example from them. It had happened quickly, being married to Marius – out of sheer joy at the freedom her father was willing to grant her, and out of desperation to be sure she would never be faced with the prospect of losing him again. What she would not ever tell Mathieu was that she was a little relieved to be away, because she was not yet sure what was to happen next. She knew of school and the small chores she was asked to do at the convent, but she did not know a great deal about the duties of being a wife.

"He's sent you a letter, I forgot," Mathieu said, sounding genuinely frenetic as he scurried to the other room of their small shack and retrieved the sealed letter. "Here, open it."

Cosette carefully broke the wax seal on the letter and unfolded it. Dearest Cosette, she read in a soft mutter. She let out a small gasp and looked up into the distance as she began to read the contents of the correspondence.

"Oh - goodness... his grandfather has just passed," she said in a faint voice, daintily clapping a hand over her mouth in surprise. "Oh, thank heavens his friends are with him," she said in genuine sadness, for even in such a short time she had developed an affection for the old man. "It's going to be terribly lonely in that house all alone. But no matter," she said with a small, resolute nod. It was unspoken but known that soon, Tante Jeanne would be with God and Mathieu would be with them in Paris.

"I don't know what I'm going to do when she's gone," Mathieu said quietly, running a hand through his thin, dull hair. "I'm not sure how I should show my face to Monsieur Marius again, I don't know what I can do to repay you –"

"Marius can help you find work," Cosette said surely. "I'm sure he'll appreciate your help. We'll find a way, Mathieu. Don't worry now – your mother is still here," she said warmly. She was sure Marius would understand that she needed to be absent for just a bit longer. He was Marius, after all. He always understood.

* * *

_A/N's_

_I'm sorry for the short chapter after such a long wait. I've actually been sitting on bunch of the story for the past few days because I wasn't sure where to split my chapters. In the end, I decided that continuity and flow were much better when I split the story here, even though not much has happened in this chapter._

_The next chapter has a lot more content and plot movement, and it should be up tomorrow. Thanks for sticking with me, everyone!_


	9. Chapter 9

Marius had been exceptionally glum in the days after his grandfather's burial – most of his time was spent buried underneath many stacks of paper related to his grandfather's estate. Now that all of it was currently in his keeping, it was his responsibility to know it like the back of his hand, even the farms in the countryside which he had previously never had a thing to do with. Enjolras took pity on him and began trying to help when he returned from the law firm in the evenings, and even was able to act as a bit of a consultant on what Marius should do in terms of running the property. Enjolras insisted it was his duty to help, as he did not realize until then how many serfs the late M. Gillenormand kept in his employ.

"You understand that you're in a position to help all of these people now, don't you?" he insisted to Marius, which did not help the young man's anxiety in the slightest. "You're going to need to think of how to pay them fair salaries, how to ensure their families are cared for and the necessary repairs are made to their homes on the farm -"

And Enjolras rambled on and on, as was his way, scaring Marius a little with every passing statement he made about how the properties should be run. It was actually at time a relief when Enjolras left for the day and Eponine was the only one left in the house besides the hired help. Eponine did not try to tell him what to do, and Eponine did not pepper the atmosphere with reminders of the fact that Marius was extremely inexperienced and unsure of what to do.

He came across her at the table this particular morning with her gaze fixed on a piece of paper in front of her – she was writing something. He cleared his throat, and she was suddenly startled, as though she was not expecting anyone to arrive, and she scrambled to pick up the papers in front of her when she realized it was Marius.

"What are you writing, 'Ponine? A letter?" he asked, walking around the table. "May I –"

"No, you can't," she said resolutely, trying to hide the paper by trying to hide it in the folds of her skirt. "It's – it's not for –"

But in her flustered state and her fervent attempts at hiding it, it fluttered to the floor, and Marius made a leap for it, snatching it and looking at it as Eponine swiped and tried to get it back.

"The Rich and Poor," he read from the top of the paper, deftly taking strides around the room to avoid Eponine until she finally gave up and covered her face with her hands with a grimace. Marius was surprised to find what he could only describe as an essay – and despite being very simple, and littered with misspelled words, it was indeed quite good. _Perhaps the poor stay poor_, she wrote, _because every day we see those who try to change their lives end up dead, and so in order to survive a little bit longer, we must accept the conditions that sentence us to death anyway, at the hands of illness or robbers or drunkards. But does this mean that when others look at us, it is right for them to say that we look like we choose to be poor? To say we choose to be poor is to say that we choose to be people. Perhaps they have the power to choose to be rich or poor. They will invariably choose to be rich._

"'Ponine, you wrote this?" Marius asked while Eponine was still covering her face. "It's brilliant, I'll show Enjolras, and perhaps he could –"

"You won't show it to Enjolras, now give it here," she said resolutely. "Give it back Marius, I was only practicing my writing because I'm not good at it. I've got to learn it all without any help now –"

"Hello, there."

They looked up, and Eponine jumped back, while Marius froze, allowing the paper to flutter to the ground as he looked in the doorway and saw, accompanied by a man carrying their travel bags, his wife – his Cosette. She rushed forward and threw her arms around her husband, hugging him tightly. Eponine let out a small breath and took a few steps backward to allow them some space, and briefly met the eyes of the other man who had entered – Mathieu, Cosette's cousin, who appeared equally out of place.

"I was going to stay longer after Tante Jeanne passed and wait for a letter to reach you – I didn't want to overwhelm you," she said quietly, placing her hand gently on Marius' cheek. "But I just wanted to be home – and I wanted Mathieu to be here with us," she explained. Her face shone with joy as Marius nodded in gracious consent, and she turned her attention to the figure behind him.

"Hullo," Eponine said in a slightly quavering voice, faced with speaking with Cosette directly and openly for the first time in quite a long time. Cosette glanced at her husband, then floatingly stepped around him to stand in front of the darker young woman.

"It's good to see you well," Cosette said with a warmth that genuinely surprised Eponine. Cosette even placed her hands on Eponine's shoulders and smiled. "Thank you – you and Enjolras – for taking care of my husband while I was gone. It must have been terribly difficult for him."

And in that single statement, in which Eponine knew she should find some relief in knowing she was welcome, Eponine instead felt familiarly crushed to hear the truth – that this was rightfully Cosette's home, and though she had come to think of it as her own home, she was not rightfully here in the same way. In her mind, it did not matter that the property had been left half to her, because the stipulation that she should be married, she knew, would never be fulfilled. It was only just, then, for Cosette to not even know – to treat Eponine as a guest.

"Come upstairs with me, would you?" Cosette asked warmly. "We have much to talk about – and I'm sure it would be best for Mathieu and Marius to get to know one another a bit better as well, hm?"

Eponine agreed, feeling it would be rude not to do so, and she followed Cosette upstairs to the parlour, leaving Marius and Mathieu in the receiving room. Mathieu, who was a bit older but functioned as though he was quite a bit young, sat down awkwardly across from the man of the house, unsure of how to speak with him despite the fact that they had spoken a bit before.

"You needn't feel so out of place. Here – let's have some wine," Marius said with a stiffness he had not felt for many weeks now while he was merely in the presence of friends and not having to play the role of the gracious host and husband, and honorable benefactor. He was no good at this, he thought to himself. Mathieu hardly spoke, and it was lucky that he accepted the wine, because otherwise, Marius was sure he might have gone mad from the silence. The two men managed to exchange a few words about the journey back to Paris, and about how Mathieu liked it, though it took a few sips of wine to get Mathieu to this point. Marius was silently thankful when Enjolras arrived back at the mansion – he, at least, was far more charismatic a presence and could perhaps draw a few more words from Mathieu.

But even Enjolras' charm, it seemed, could not yet draw Mathieu from his shell as he was the first to retire to his room. "He is grieving," Enjolras explained. "He will let down his guard in time."

And of course, both Marius and Enjolras understood grief.

At this, Enjolras poured himself a glass from the bottle of wine, which genuinely surprised Marius – it was only the second time he had seen his friend partake of drink, and indeed it was strange to see Enjolras, their enigmatic and impassioned leader, was relegated to the status of a simple human like everyone else. It was at once a relief and a harsh jolt of reality. He was a fallen idol.

Enjolras, on the other hand, simply did not want to think of anything – he gave the wine a swirl in his glass and stared at the dark red liquid clinging to the sides of the glass. It had been another long day, with Laperriere giving him no credit for anything. A year or two more of this before I'm in any sort of position to help anyone, he mused somewhat bitterly, his forehead wrinkled in disdain.

The two sat in a more comfortable silence until Marius glanced down at the floor and saw a piece of paper – the same one that he and Eponine had been almost playfully squabbling over before Cosette and Mathieu had arrived. He slowly picked it up and smoothed out the wrinkles it had acquired in the shuffle before holding it out to Enjolras, who squinted at it skeptically but still took it from his friend's hand.

"It's good," he said with a slight raise of his eyebrows as he skimmed the unfinished statements. "It's – simple, but absolutely right."

"'Ponine wrote it."

Enjolras looked up from the paper at his friend, and his eyebrows had now risen so high that they threatened to disappear into his hairline entirely. Of course, he knew Eponine was a girl with thoughts – not always sophisticated ones, but always interesting ones, and always painfully realistic ones. Perhaps, he thought, they had paid so little attention to how much she had been learning from old Gillenormand after all.

"I'll be damned," he said with a slight chuckle, shaking his head and looking back down at the paper in his hands. "She's a remarkable thing, you know."

"She's impressed you," Marius said knowingly, and inexplicably, his eyebrows knotted questioningly at the fact. Enjolras glanced up at Marius, sensing an unfamiliar tone in his voice.

"In as long as you've known her, I'm not sure how she didn't impress you just as much," Enjolras said, though he knew well enough where all of Marius's attention had been and still remained.

"Is that all?" Marius asked with an amount of concern for the answer that was genuinely surprising. "I'm only saying what I see, Enjolras. And I see you becoming more and more –" his voice trailed off. More and more what, exactly? He had not planned this out. Perhaps it was the wine which had caused the question to come tumbling out before it had truly formed itself in his mind, and so Marius left it floating in the air unfinished. "I seem to recall you saying that the only woman who would truly impress you was –"

"Patria?" Enjolras asked, leaning so that his elbows were resting on his knees. "I suppose you don't see it, then? Eponine is proof that what I wanted for Patria – for France – can happen. You don't see the way she's bloomed, the way she's come out of the darkness and become alive and healthy and –" he let out a chuckle, a strangely unfamiliar sound coming from him, and caused Marius's eyes to widen.

"What does this mean, then?" he asked, feeling a strange emotion in his stomach. A sort of protectiveness over his friend who he knew cared deeply for him. It was a strange feeling to think perhaps Enjolras was beginning to see something which he never could. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to bring this back to the university to Brisbois. Perhaps he hasn't left yet," Enjolras said, standing from his seat. "'Ponine deserves this."

And he got up and strode out into the late afternoon, leaving Marius to suspect that perhaps Enjolras was not breaking his vow to never love a woman except for his Patria – it was hard, though, to accept that to Enjolras, Patria had taken the form of something real. It gives him hope, Marius thought, sitting and pouring himself a half glass more wine, and ever-present hope for a better future was the one thing which truly made Enjolras who he was. If Eponine were to be his muse, then what good would come in stopping it? And what harm would could from allowing it to be so?

* * *

_A/N's_

_So, Marius is starting to suspect a little something brewing between Eponine and Enjolras, and Cosette is back. The next chapter will contain an interesting Cosette/Eponine conversation, and a little bit more diving into Cosette's mind, since she's been absent for most of the story so far._


	10. Chapter 10

The quiet that pervaded the parlor with Cosette and Eponine was thick and almost tangible – almost suffocating, Eponine thought, noting how in this quiet, Cosette's gaze seemed to linger on her for uncomfortably long. Cosette had taken it upon herself that she should teach Eponine to sew, because it was something over which she could bond with the other young woman without needing to be too close to her. She decided to teach Eponine to embroider handkerchiefs, which Eponine agreed to, though with some skepticism.

"We're going to give them to the needy," Cosette explained kindly.

"I don't see what they'd do with them," Eponine said candidly, attempting to maneuver to small needle without pricking herself. "Are you sure that poor people would want this?"

"Of course. When you're dirty and poor and being treated badly, of course you'll want nice things. Even just one," Cosette said with a slight, unintentional pang of bitterness in her voice that brought silence back between the two girls. The memory of being poor, being a servant girl while Eponine had the love of a family and all of the nicest things, was still a tender one for Cosette, even if the years had turned the tables and turned her into a graceful flower, blessed with all of the best things and love from those who surrounded her. Eponine, of course, was not too slow to understand this, and so she simply complied with the quiet and allowed Cosette to regain her composure.

"I can sew a little," Eponine finally managed to reply after a short while, not looking up from the project which Cosette had given her. "I used to patch the holes in my Papa's things. But nothing like this."

"Well," Cosette said with a slightly tight-lipped smile, trying her best as she genuinely wanted to make amends with the young women who, in all honesty, had done a great deal for her husband and therefore for her. "It's best you learn. When you're married one day, you'll be doing plenty of sewing."

At this, Eponine laughed – an almost masculine guffaw which made Cosette flinch a bit at the fact that Eponine was clearly quite a bit rougher around the edges than she. Eponine, on the other hand, did not even notice the reaction at all and simply went about attempting to copy the small scalloped flower shape that Cosette was embroidering into the kerchief. Cosette went on a bit, about how the parlor was looking a bit old and dark, and how it could do with some nice new curtains – even lace ones, Cosette suggested. She asked what Eponine thought of the idea and realized that Eponine did not seem interested in such things at all.

"I ought to have introduced you to Mathieu," Cosette continued. "He hasn't wed yet either. And he's – well, you know. He's like you."

"He's poor, you mean," Eponine said with a grin at Cosette. "Poor like me. But perhaps that would be the best for both of us. If he marries me, then I don't believe either of us would be poor."

"Excuse me?" Cosette asked, pausing from her kerchief and gazing up in confusion. 'I'm not sure I understand."

"Well, if anyone ever is possessed to marry me for whatever reason, he would receive half of Monsieur Gillenormand's fortune. I surely don't know what to do with it," she laughed. Cosette, however, stared at Eponine who was as aloof as ever. Marius had not told her about the stipulation in his grandfather's will that included Eponine, and Cosette surely did not understand what about Eponine would possess him to leave her anything at all, let alone half of everything he had worked his entire life for. It was not that Cosette was still angry at the girl, Cosette insisted to herself, but the fact that a part of her resented not knowing – was that not what Marius was meant to do as a husband, to tell his wife about these sorts of occurrences?

But as the immediate annoyance quickly subsided, as Cosette was not one for grudges, she came to realize that perhaps there was some merit to the idea of Eponine marrying Mathieu. They did, after all, share a common background of hardship, and Mathieu did, after all, deserve a new start and a new life. Surely, Cosette decided, Marius would not be angry if Cosette were to help Eponine see the merits of such an engagement between herself and Mathieu. Mathieu Valjean, who had taken his mother's maiden name out of disdain for a father who died a drunk very early in Mathieu's life, was a sturdy and hardworking man who treated people well and with respect. Eponine would be, in Cosette's opinion, blessed to have him as a husband, and Mathieu in turn for treating her well as a husband would be blessed with a better life.

"I think you'll find him… very sweet," Cosette said with a new warmth toward Eponine that had not been present moments earlier. This fondness too was not feigned, but instead a genuine bubbling over of joy at the idea of Eponine being the way to a better life for Cosette's newfound family. "I'd love for us all to have supper together. Don't you think it would be wonderful?"

"Tonight?" Eponine asked, putting her kerchief down on the parlor table. "You and your cousin must be dreadfully tired from the journey."

"I'm sure he's as dreadfully famished as I am," Cosette smiled, standing up. "I'm going to freshen up and tell him. You keep practicing," she said, picking Eponine's handkerchief back up and gently nudging it back into the dark-haired woman's hands. "I'll see you at supper, then?"

Resuming her sewing, Eponine lingered only briefly on the peculiarity of Cosette's behavior – people did act very odd, Eponine knew, when they were tired. She did know that she didn't find Monsieur Mathieu necessarily handsome. He was very lean and thin and a bit bug-eyed the way poor people often were. His hair was a bit uneven and balding a bit at the forehead and crown, despite the fact that he was not quite yet old. He did not some ablaze or alive in any way the way Marius did, even in the way that Enjolras did.

And speaking of Enjolras, he came barreling with such enthusiasm through the parlor door that he nearly fell over the first chair where Cosette had previously been sitting. Slightly short of breath, he rested his hands slightly on his knees. "'Ponine, I have news for you. I've just – what are you doing?" he asked suddenly, seeing the needle, thread, and kerchief in Eponine's hands.

"Cosette asked me to practice," she explained, only momentarily looking up from her work. "I ought to learn, I'll be a better wife this way. And I'm not a pauper anymore. I ought to do things more fitting to my station. Like Cosette."

"Put that rubbish aside," Enjolras snapped, clasping it in his hand and pulling it away from her with only enough caution to ensure that she wasn't pricked by the needle. "Don't you think that you may have a greater purpose than this? Than being like Cosette?"

Enjolras paused, knowing that such a statement was wrong to speak, especially since they were in Cosette's home. He did not genuinely dislike the girl, but identified her with what he felt was wrong with women – that they were so busy being women and pining after men that they did not realize what they could do, how they could change France for the better. "You don't need to sew flowers into rags, 'Ponine, you're more than that!" he said, his fist curling tightly around the handkerchief before casting it aside entirely. Eponine stared at the young man in front of her, completely bewildered. "I showed your writing to Laperrier and he thinks it's brilliant. He's going to show it to his superiors –"

"I'm learning to sew and I'm going to help Cosette make new lace curtains for the parlor," Eponine interrupted, her eyes wide in surprise at his statement, though she did not yet even feel prepared to acknowledge the fact that Enjolras had seen it at all. "If I'm going to live here, I'm going to need to do something significant to contribute –"

"And you think _lace curtains_ are significant, 'Ponine?" Enjolras scoffed with a fire present in his eyes that had for a long while now seemed to have gone out. "What does it matter what Cosette thinks?"

"Because this is her home. She is married to Marius and this is her house," Eponine said resolutely.

"Gillenormand left half of everything to you. This is more your home than hers," he argued. "Admit that you wish to be more like Cosette because you want to be more like a girl that Pontmercy would love."

Eponine froze, almost as though a shiver had run down her spine, and her gaze at Enjolras grew icy as though she would strike him at any moment – and Enjolras, in this moment, would accept any attack from Eponine at this moment if it meant that she would snap out of her trance in which she only wanted to be an imitation of Cosette. She did not strike him, however, and simply tilted her chin upward.

"Why did you give my paper to Laperriere? It was only silly, I asked Marius not to show it to you," she chided. "Why did you do it?"

"Because you suggested to me that I change France by changing one life at a time," Enjolras said, his shoulders drawing up with something that looked a bit like pride, a bit like protectiveness, and a bit like something unidentifiable. "And I am starting with yours, 'Ponine."

"That's silly," she scoffed, rolling her eyes at him and starting to walk past him, intending on following Cosette's lead and simply freshening up for dinner. "Why would you begin with mine?"

"Because you are Patria," Enjolras said, catching her by the crook of her arm before she could walk away from him. "And if I can succeed for you, I can succeed for anyone."

Eponine stared at Enjolras for a short time – for the first time, really stared at him. He looked a little bit like a madman, she mused. An angelic, almost deceiving madman, always speaking of things which Eponine felt sure were and always would be far beyond her own meager understanding. He seemed a man who was always running a race, always fighting a war even when he was sitting completely silent and still, and that to Eponine, strangely enough, was a very familiar feeling.

"I do not know your Patria, but I am not her," Eponine said with a slight faltering in her tone as she stared at Enjolras. "You look at me as though you love me and I do not like it."

"You do not like the idea of being loved?"

"I do not know how," Eponine retorted, calmly but firmly removing her arm from his grasp and realizing how close they were standing now. The proximity felt strange, and evoked an almost discomforting sort of warmth in her. She tensed her body slightly and proceeded out of the room, only slowing to say over her shoulder that supper would be ready shortly and Cosette expected everyone to be present.

Left alone in the parlor, Enjolras stood very still for a time after crossing his arms over his chest. Why did Eponine refuse to be brought out of this state of near-gloom to which she seemed to constantly subject herself? Because, Enjolras decided, Eponine was _afraid_ of a better life. She dreamed of it, and yet she was afraid of it. He now knew that he could not rest until she overcame that fear – the fear of living in the light, of being loved, of deserving warmth and good regards from others. He did not yet care to confront in himself why he felt that was his mission – he only knew that this was what it had to be.

* * *

_A/N's_

_So, for many of you, hopefully the Enjolras/Eponine interaction in this chapter is what you've long been asking for. The next chapter is going to consist of a somewhat awkward dinner conversation, Marius and Cosette working out a little bit of what being married will really mean for them, and a few other twists and turns which you will just have to wait for!_


	11. Chapter 11

Eponine felt that this was not so much a dinner as it was an interrogation. The table was set as such so that Marius and Cosette were next to one another, and Eponine was situated between Mathieu and Enjolras, neither of whom she felt particularly inclined to look at after the conversations of the past afternoon. Cosette smiled very awkwardly at Eponine the entire time, glancing intermittently at her cousin as though to try and guide Eponine's gaze in his direction. Eponine, however, would have none of it and instead averted her gaze to the kitchen as the maids came out with the warm bread and butter.

"Mathieu," Cosette spoke up when she realized that conversation would not begin without some assistance. "I don't believe you've met Eponine properly. We – we grew up together," Cosette said, though at the final part of the introduction, her smiled grew markedly forced. "I think you both would get on well –"

"Because they grew up poor, you mean," Enjolras spoke up calmly, not looking up and instead extending his hand to wordlessly request that Eponine pass him some bread. "Yes, I suppose that is the easiest way to make a match, isn't it? Stick to your own? If it works for the rich, then why can't it work for –"

"Enjolras, has anything interesting happened with LaPerriere lately?" Marius interrupted, raising his eyebrows at his friend. "Mathieu – Enjolras is an apprentice to an attorney here in Paris, maybe he could teach you a bit? He deals a lot with businessmen."

"I really have no interest in business," Mathieu said, the first time Eponine had heard him speak. If Eponine's poverty was evident, then Mathieu's was blatant, even just in his voice, which sounded as though puffs of dust erupted from his lungs every time he spoke. It was a bit like wind, with only faint whisps of voice in between, which was far from Eponine's harsh, almost masculine bark of a voice. "I've grown up working in fields, I don't think I could bear to do anything else. It's peaceful."

"It does sound that way, doesn't it?" Cosette said with a smile. "There was a sort of charm, living away from the ruckus of Paris, wasn't there, 'Ponine? Montfermeil was quaint, in its way."

"I can't say it would be easy to go back, though," Eponine chuckled before taking another bite of bread, and the look of disappointment on Cosette's face did not evade Enjolras' notice, as he looked a great deal calmer now. Marius, on the other hand, looked as though someone had tightened his collar to an uncomfortable extent. He hadn't expected this to be the way Cosette became a part of the home – he had not caught wind of her plans about Mathieu and Eponine, but could not ignore her very open attempts to introduce the pair, especially with Eponine not appearing in the least a willing participant, and Enjolras' hackles raising at any attempt to force interaction.

Perhaps it was a sign that he had very much to still learn about his wife, but he quickly learned by dinner's end that she was not merely a delicate, patient blossom – she was ever the lady, but one with a temper, and for the first time since meeting her, he truly met her once they retired to their bedroom for the evening.

"I'm disappointed, you know," she said with a huff and she finally let her hair down and let it fall down her shoulders. "I know Enjolras is your dear, dear friend. He is here, and he is family now. But I did not expect you would let him speak to me that way."

"What way?" Marius asked, genuinely perplexed by this side of Cosette – this grousing and harrumphing that was not at all compatible with the idea of her that he had first seen across the cobblestone streets and instantly fallen in love with. "He was only saying –"

"Saying that it was wrong of me to think that Eponine and Mathieu could make a fine pair," Cosette finished, raising her eyebrows. "And they would! They're from the same world, they understand each other."

"I don't think you know Eponine as well as you might think," Marius said gently, which caused a bit of color to drain from his wife's face, and he immediately knew he had chosen the wrong response. Still, it was too late now to conduct the conversation in a way that would appease her, and so the next best idea would be to try and convince her. "You know, she's been reading and studying. Grandfather taught her a bit more than she already knew, and she accompanied Enjolras to school once, he said she was astounding. She's quite bright –"

"And so she is too good for my cousin?" Cosette interrupted again, and again Marius felt a sinking sort of sensation that perhaps he did not know Cosette as well as he thought either. "Marius, Mathieu is a good man –"

"A good man whom you have known for all of two months – and two months is a generous estimate," Marius said in a slightly exasperated tone. "I understand you mean well. I understand you want what's best for him – and I will do everything in my power to help him make a good living in my grandfather's business. But I don't suppose it would be a terrible inconvenience for you to tell me first before betrothing him to one of my dearest friends."

Cosette's face contorted in resolute annoyance at her husband's response to her proposition – indeed, she was a clever, practical young woman when given the chance to be, and she saw no reason why it should not at least be suggested that Mathieu and Eponine could be good for one another. Her delicate hands clenched into fists at her sides before she strode across the room to stare out the window, attempting to mask the look of disappointment on her face. She had hoped – had sincerely believed that in marrying Marius, she would have someone who would take her side in every battle. She had not considered the possibility that they would become one of _these_ couples, who disagreed and fought and groused, who thought ill of another. After a few breaths, she turned around and glanced over at Marius – she was surprised to see that his face reflected very much the same emotion. In that instant, it was almost like a jolt of lightning. It was not the same as that of their first meeting, in which they instantly and reciprocally feel in love with one another. This, instead, was the sudden mutual realization that the other was not a perfect person, that the other half they had chosen was flawed as well, and that this was the foundation of their marriage.

Marius, on the other hand, felt relieved at this point that he was growing more observant than he had been in months prior – smarter, even. He had been called dense a few times for not having known that Eponine had been so very in love with him, and had only agreed to all of his ridiculous plans because of it. Now, however, Marius felt confident in his ability to see things and read things – he could see that attempting to force Mathieu and Eponine into anything would be a great disservice to Eponine, as well as to Enjolras, whose pride was still greatly wounded. While he did not jump to conclusions about reasons why, Marius was sure that Eponine was playing a larger role than anyone else in his healing, and to tear that away by giving Eponine to another man to become his housewife and handmaiden would be a travesty indeed. He was indeed becoming a smarter man, but being smart was not a romantic quality, and the fact that both he and his wife were becoming a bit smarter, a bit more independent, weighed heavily on the romance of their marriage.

"I only mean to help them both," Cosette said resolutely. "After all, they could both use the portion of your Grandfather's estate. Mathieu would help you greatly, and the portion of your Grandfather's estate –"

"Who told you?" Marius asked suddenly.

"Eponine mentioned it briefly. I wondered, then, why you did not," Cosette said, raising her eyebrows slightly.

"I did not think it mattered greatly – you've never shown any interest in the business, and I was sure it would bore you," Marius said. "But Cosette, if you've only just found out before supper about the estate and had already planned for how to give it to Mathieu, without once speaking to me –"

"I was not planning to _give_ it to him!" Cosette said sharply, and the little songbird who had always for Marius shown so brightly suddenly appeared to have talons, as her glared pierced her husband. "It was only a thought – you said yourself you couldn't fathom running the business alone, and Mathieu can help you."

"He said himself he has no desire to learn about business," Marius said.

"Then we will convince him," Cosette replied. "Unless you would rather Eponine marry a complete stranger, and have someone whom you don't know in the slightest as a business partner."

"No."

There was a silence in the room as Cosette attempted to process Marius' reply – what was he refusing? She wondered. Who else would he have as a business partner.

"If Eponine comes to love Mathieu, then so be it," Marius continued. "But if she does not, then we will find some other way to help him."

"She will not love him," Cosette said, and her voice at this point was strangely calm as she stared at her husband, her eyes like pools of still water as she awaited his reaction. "Because I'm sure we all know she will never have the man she truly loves."

"She understands," Marius said staunchly – there was a firmness and finality, almost fatherliness in his voice which Cosette had never heard from him before. "But for all she has done for us, she deserves at the very least to _be_ loved. If your cousin can give that to her – wholeheartedly, without expectation – then we shall see."

And between the pair, an unsettling silence nestled its way for the remainder of the night.

* * *

_A/N's_

_Sorry for the long disappearance. Nursing school has been a little crazy, so catching up this story went slightly on the backburner. I'll try to pace myself a little better now that my schedule is a little more predictable. Anyway, in this chapter, as promised, we have a sad but much-needed reality check for Marius and Cosette about what being marriage will truly mean for them. I know there are a lot of Cosette fans out there who will not like this portrayal, but bear with me for a while - it's a natural part of a marriage to hit these speedbumps. And there will be a little bit more friction between Enjolras and Cosette, and it's going to play a large part in the story later on. There was no real collision between the two yet because Marius is still able to do damage control, but it will come. We'll also learn a little bit more about Mathieu soon.  
_

_Thank you everyone for all your support, and everyone on Tumblr for prodding me to get back on my writing game. Until next chapter, cheers!_


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